


Long Shadows

by athena_crikey



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:25:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako visits the heart of the Southern Water Tribe, only to find that he can't. Or: Mako meets Katara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the final ep of season 1. Also slightly non-canonical as Mako and Bolin probably met Katara when she was trying to heal Korra. Eh.

The one thing Mako didn’t expect about the South Pole is the silence. Everything else is pretty much the way Korra described it – the cold that wraps around him like a wet blanket and freezes in heavy folds; the infinite, blinding whiteness; the ice crystals that sparkle like prisms in the air and prickle his nose; the ever-present smell of blubber. But she never mentioned the eerie soundlessness, the way the shoulder-deep snowdrifts and towering glaciers swallow up noise greedily as an eel-gull. 

“Hey Mako, Bolin!” Korra comes skidding around the corner of the visitor’s lodge while bellowing, shaking loose a foot of snow from the roof above. “C’mon slow pokes, time’s a wasting.”

Probably, Mako thinks sourly as he shakes the snow from his hair, she never noticed the silence. 

With her bending restored, Korra’s relentless energy returned as well. Their two days with the Southern Water Tribe have been crammed full of penguin sledding, ice fishing, polar bear dog riding, and of course eating. Mako isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to scrub the taste of sea prunes from his mouth. 

“Where are we going? We’re supposed to be leaving in a couple of hours,” says Mako, very aware he’s the only one of the three with either a watch or the inclination to check it. 

Bolin’s hand shoots up immediately. “Ooh! Can we go penguin sledding again? That was seriously awesome!”

“I think the penguins are still recovering, bro,” says Mako; Bolin shoots him a glare. Ahead, Korra laughs and turns to lead the way while walking backwards through the snow, arms crossed behind her head. She navigates blindly with ease – in Republic City Korra is full of surprise and awe, but here she is steady, absolute. 

“No, we don’t have time for that. I’m going to take you to see something special. I guess you could call it the heart of the Southern Water Tribe.”

Bolin jogs a little to keep up with Korra’s effortless pace, his thick boots squeaking in the snow. “Sounds cool. Well, you know. Cooler than everything else around here. Which would have to make it pretty cold.”

Mako trudges along slightly behind, feeling not a little like an otter-penguin waddling along, his arms forced out to the side by the bulk of his borrowed parka. 

Korra talks most of the rest of the way, pointing out the homes of friends, the watch tower she accidentally-on-purpose set on fire when she was five to find out if frozen wood burned, the scars on the distant glacier walls she carved out in her training. Both Mako and Bolin have learned to keep talking to a minimum while outside or risk freezing from the inside out as well as the outside in. 

She leads them up a gentle sloping incline which Mako wouldn’t even notice at home but here carrying twice his body-weight in furs causes him to sweat like crazy, and that sets off the blubber smell. He swears to himself that when he gets home he’ll never take cotton for granted again.

The domed igloos, sitting like half-buried eggs in the snow, fell off as they climbed the slope and at the top of the little hill they find only the flat surface of a glacial wall with a narrow arched doorway set in it.

“Here we are!” announces Korra proudly, looking at them for impressions. They stare blankly from her to the wind-beaten ice, and she raises her hands in acceptance. “Okay, okay, it’s more impressive on the inside. C’mon!” She steps into the doorway and disappears almost immediately into the shadows. Bolin follows without pause; Mako brings up the rear. 

Mako’s first impression is of being underwater. Everything is a strange blue-green – the floor is the muted glass-green sea-buoys, the walls a pale periwinkle, even the white of Korra and Bolin’s parkas are the storm-grey of the Pro-Bending water bender sashes here. All around is the sound of running water, in some places falling in droplets like rain, in others running with the strength of a deep river. In the strange flickering light he can’t see it, but he feels surrounded by it: submerged, breathless. 

His second impression is one of height – the glacier has been hollowed out in a column so high he can’t see the roof, but as he glances up he sees arched bridges of ice criss-crossing the open space. Aqueducts, he thinks, vaguely, as he follows Korra and Bolin onto the hard ice floor. There are balconies too, some straight, others scalloped, stretching along the walls at different heights. 

“- and oh wow, is that a slide?” Bolin is asking; Mako shakes his head, trying to find the lost words and failing. His head is full of the crashing sound of water beating down on rocks, violent and relentless.

“Sure is! And upstairs there’s a…” Korra’s words fade out as she and Bolin wander deeper into the huge open space. Mako slips off a heavy seal-fox glove and pinches the bridge of his nose. It does nothing for the pressure building up behind his eyes. He blinks, notices Korra glancing back at him, and waves a vague hand. 

“You go on ahead, I’ll be up … in a minute.” He watches long enough to see them heading for some distant staircase, and then turns.

Because Mako’s third impression is that if he doesn’t get out of here right now, he’s going to faint. 

He staggers out into the blindingly white morning with one hand scuffing along the wall to guide him. He hadn’t felt warm inside, so the sudden blast of cold is shocking, but also welcome. He’s opening the neck of the parka to let some more of the sharp breeze slice in when – 

“You shouldn’t do that, young man. You’ll feel cold enough in a moment. Come have a seat instead.”

Mako stumbles to his right, feet trying to skid out from under him, and sees a wizened old woman standing beside him gesturing to an impressively square block of ice by the entrance to the cave. A block of ice that definitely hadn’t been there when he arrived. 

“Go on, go on,” she says, smiling. “There’s much less shame in sitting down than falling down.”

He does as she says, legs folding gratefully beneath him and dropping him onto the hard ice. He winces and shifts; she doesn’t take any notice, but steps over and perches herself beside him in a smooth movement. 

Mako forces himself to pay attention to her, rather than his traitorously shaky legs. He’s hardly ever seen anyone as old as her: people don’t live long on the streets – growing up he and Bolin had called men over thirty “Grandpa.” Her dark skin is incredibly wrinkled, but they’re soft, smooth wrinkles, not deep, cutting ones. He has the sense that she’s controlling her age, rather than it her. 

“You must be Mako, the firebender. I’m glad to meet you.” She stares sedately up at him, utterly confident, and he swallows. Deeply.

“You’re Master Katara,” he says. She smiles.

“Very good. Was it my age? There are no other water benders this old in the Southern Tribe.”

He starts to shrug before his manners – the ones he learned running in the gangs, not from his parents – stop him. “It was just… something about you.” He doesn’t return the question; Korra only brought two friends with her, and his eyes speak for him. 

“I’m pleased Korra brought you here. I wasn’t sure that she would, you know. It’s an important place for our people, but… perhaps not as exciting as penguin sledding or ice dodging.” Master Katara cocks her head slightly, eyes twinkling. 

“She said it was the heart of your village. I’d like to see it. I just – it’s kind of close in there. After all this openness, I mean,” he manages, stumbling over his words and looking down at his feet to avoid whatever he might see in her eyes. The wind is already starting to bury his boots in flakes of loose snow. 

“That’s a shame,” answers Master Katara, with regret. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to.”

Mako looks up to find her staring at him thoughtfully. “Did Korra tell you what this is?” she asks, gesturing to the glacial wall beside her. He shakes his head mutely. “It’s a temple honouring the sacred spirits of the Water Tribe. Tui and La, the Moon and Ocean spirits. It was built many years ago as a place to honour them, and as a place of refuge for my people. It was designed by my brother, although Aang and I did most of the grunt work, as usual.”

“Sokka,” says Mako, trying not to infuse the casualness that comes from speaking a household name. And then, frowning: “But he was one of the founding members of Republic City.”

Katara nods. “He was. But his Water Tribe blood was very strong, especially in his youth. He built this temple when Republic City was just an outpost, when the Hundred Years War was still fresh in everyone’s mind. I know it seems like a hundred years ago now to you, but then everyone half-expected the war to begin again. Sometimes, we still woke up watching for black snow.” She pauses to watch him expectantly. 

“Soot,” he says after a minute, looking down at his hands. He made it when he was a child, smeared it across his face as war paint when he and Bo played. That had been before every day was a fight to survive.

“Yes. Our Tribe was always very vulnerable to fire. We didn’t have the great tundra of the Northern Tribe, and our people were scattered across many villagers. Our homes were burned, our boats destroyed, our waterbenders taken or killed. For three generations. That is a fear that does not disappear in one year, or five, or ten. And Sokka lost more than many. So he built this temple for the safety of our Tribe. In case they ever came back.” Her voice is ice-cold.

Mako looks up at the craggy face of the glacier. The wind brushes snow over it, picking out every edge and nook before hiding them again. “It looks very strong,” he agrees politely.

“Strong? Yes, I suppose so. It would take you years to melt an opening in it, and you would probably freeze to death first. But even if you were to breach the wall, it wouldn’t matter. You would not enter it.”

“I wouldn’t?” Mako makes to stand, and his legs tremble traitorously. “That – that was you?”

“Not me. The temple. I told you; my brother designed it as a refuge. It took him years of testing and fiddling, but he found a way to protect it. It’s something to do with the harmonics of the running water: it affects your balance, your energy. Water is fire’s opposite element, and enough of it can act almost as a magnet used to repel another. No firebender can enter the temple. And the Fire Nation only employs firebenders. Even now.” 

There’s something about her calm but relentless tone that makes him shiver even more than the cutting wind. “That’s – well planned,” he manages. 

Katara nods once. “Yes. My brother was good at that. And he had some help. We needed to make sure it actually worked, of course. Can you guess who volunteered?”

“A firebender? ... _Fire Lord Zuko_ ,” he hisses. Katara smiles at him as though he were a child that did something clever. “But he controlled the army! He could just make sure they wouldn’t come.”

“True. For as long as he held power. But the Fire Nation was very unstable in the early years of Zuko’s rule; he understood the threat. And he understood our fear.” Katara stands slowly, stretching by inches. “I am telling you this, Mako, so that you understand what living in a time of war drives a people to. The depth of our fear, the amount of control one people can have over another. Today our children know the temple only as a safe place – a place to go when it storms, or if a polar bear dog goes mad in the village. They have forgotten their parents’ fear of the Fire Nation, of firebenders. Even Korra, the Avatar, did not know you couldn’t enter the temple.”

He stands too, somewhat shakily, and with a wave of her hand Katara scatters the block of ice into millions of snowflakes. “As I said, for you the Hundred Years War was practically a hundred years ago. But now the world is facing a new one war. It won’t be fought between nations, or between benders, but between benders and non-benders. And as long as you are in Korra’s life, you will play a part in it. That’s why I want you to understand, just a little, what it feels like to live on the edge of defeat. To live waiting for the black snow.”

She puts a hand on his arm; it is rock steady. Although he has to tilt his neck so that his chin is almost resting on his chest to meet her eye, he feels like she’s the one staring him down. “We were given a gift which makes us more powerful than non-benders. It does not make us any more important.”

He opens his mouth, knowing he has no words to put in it. So for once it’s a relief when Korra comes barging out of the temple, sliding to a stop that throws snow up against his leg. “Master Katara! I didn’t know you would be here. I thought you were in the Western Village.”

Bolin emerges into the light behind Korra; his eyes widen to the size of apricots. “ _Master Katara?_ ” he hisses at Mako. Mako raises his eyebrows: _no shit bro._

“I just returned and thought I might find you here. Mako and I were chatting. It was very nice to finally meet him.”

“The honour was mine,” says Mako, and those are his original manners, the sparse rusty remains the streets didn’t sand down. 

Master Katara gives him a wise smile; it smoothes away some of the wrinkles and shows just a hint of the face he’s seen in paintings and statues, the young girl from the South Pole who defeated the Fire Nation Princess. “Perhaps when we meet next, you will tell me more about yourself.”

There’s no real answer to that, so Mako just bows. Korra stares at him funnily, and it occurs to him that she’s never seen him bow. Bolin’s giving him a funny look too, but that’s just because he wants to be introduced. “This is my brother,” he says, succumbing. “Bolin.”

Katara’s smile becomes wider: it’s a grandmother’s smile, not a master’s. “Ah, the earthbender. Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise! Wow! You are super, super amazing! Why have I never come here before? All the coolest people are from here! Mako, seriously, we should move here. But in the summer, maybe.”

“This _is_ summer,” says Korra, puzzled. 

“Aaand it’s time to go,” announces Mako, grabbing Bolin. “We’ve still got to pick up our stuff, remember? Thank you, Master Katara,” he says, as he swivels his brother around. She nods for a moment, before being enveloped in a hug from Korra. 

“Thanks for what?” asks Bolin, on the way down the slope.

“Just being polite. How was the temple?”

“Oh, it was totally neat. They’ve got this system of slides made out of ice – you can’t imagine. We definitely have to come back. And there’s water everywhere; Korra says a waterbender pumps it up to the top of the building every day, can you believe it?”

“Yeah,” says Mako, looking back to see the old woman watching them from the top of the hill. “Yeah, I think I can.”

END


End file.
